January 2006, Part 1
Dear Subscriber,
Welcome to the
first installment of the January Big Drum!
SONG OF THE MONTH: "Fool In The Rain" by Led Zeppelin. John Bonham
on drums.
Yes! Finally!
I've had so many requests to do this song and now I'm finally doing
it. It is a personal favourite and a really, REALLY infectious
groove to play.
The A Section.
Conceptually it's
not that different from "Rosanna" by Toto. It's another half time
shuffle feel, but slightly heavier.
As with most half
time shuffles you need to subdivide each beat into 6 per beat, or,
think of it as
triplets.
Let's look at the bass and snare figure first..
So you can see
that other than playing the bass drum on 1 and snare on 3, you're
playing the other bass drum notes on the 1+a
beats. This gives it the swinging or shuffle feel..
Let's now look at the hands. Again, same thing as in Rosanna. With
the right hand you play accents with the
shoulder of the stick on the edge of the hihats, and
non-accents with the tip of the stick on
the top of the hihats.
With the left
hand just play the middle triplet on the snare..
From there add
the back beat on beat 3, a solid rimshot..
Then with the
bass drum figures as well, you get this this..
And last but not
least, add it a hihat gliss on beat 1+a..
The B Section.
Instead of a feel
based on triplets, the B Section goes into a straight 16th snare
feel. After 2 versus of the shuffle there is a band break and the
piano sets up the new 16th feel. The
drums
then launch into this kind of pattern on the snare.
NOTE: even though
the tempo of the song HAS NOT changed; because you are now playing
16ths instead of triplets, this new section sounds busier, there is
a lot of momentum in this section. Here's a good pattern to play..
You can rimshot
the accents. A variation that John Bonham plays towards the end is
accents on every 16th except the downbeat..
Then he plays
sextuplets (6 per beat) to lead back into the original feel..
EZYBEATS!
1) Slow
2) Medium
3) Fast
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